This is the story of the rebel and the one-eyed king. A rebel is someone who has been told by others that the rebel is not like the others. However, being told that one is unlike others is not enough to be a rebel.

In order to be a rebel, one must also accept other people’s identifying of someone as a rebel to be the valid interpretation or perhaps not even an interpretation at all, but the actual identity, the inherent reality, the eternal truth. In order to be a rebel, one must think as a rebel, talk as a rebel, walk as a rebel, and act as a rebel in all ways.

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In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The king is the one who sees what no one else sees, who thinks what no one else thinks, who speaks as no one else speaks, and who acts how no one else acts, perhaps even in all ways.

Many people claim to be rebels, as they emphasize how different other people are from them and how different they are from other people. Many people also claim to want to become kings. However, who dares to rebel against rebellion?

At first, the rebel did not even know what a rebel is. The rebel just lived a quiet, simple life inside the protective belly of the rebel’s mother. It was sometime around when the rebel landed on the shores of the earth that something quite magical happened.

The rebel was approached by a wizard who gave the rebel some magical instruments for distinguishing what is safe and what is dangerous. The rebel had one magic lens for identifying things that are safe and another magic lens for identifying things that are dangerous. One lens saw only blue and one lens saw only red.

The wizard called these magical instruments “glasses” and placed these two lens in front of each of the eyes of the rebel. Then, the wizard said “these lenses will always stay on you or else you will instantly die.”

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So, the rebel lived for quite a while with the special skill of being able to identify certain things as safe and certain other things as dangerous. There were safe places and dangerous places. There were safe people and dangerous people. There were safe ideas and dangerous ideas.

Generally, anything familiar was safe and anything unfamiliar was dangerous. Familiar places and familiar people and familiar ideas were safe. Also, anything that familiar people claim to be dangerous must be dangerous- like traffic racing by on the street or power outlets in the wall or knives or battery acid or not putting the lid tightly on the messy things or coloring on the blank side of daddy’s work papers.

Also, a few things were extremely safe while a few things were extremely dangerous. At first, there was just the two categories of safe and unsafe, then increasing precision and clarity in just how safe or how dangerous something is.

For a long time, there was only good and bad. However, soon, out on the far edges of good and bad, there was also evil and holy.

The rebel noticed that at least sometimes it was really most important to identify what is risky. When there are a lot of safe things and even just one risky thing, it can be very important to know which one is risky. One risky thing can functionally cancel a bunch of safe things, kind of like driving with a seatbelt on (which is safe) while having your headlights on (which is also safe) but then driving the wrong way on a busy one way street or ignoring the red traffic light and red stop sign by driving out in to an intersection when lots of traffic is speeding across it in a different direction.

Having lots of safe things are wonderful. However, knowing what is risky can actually be much more relevant.

So, the rebel got extremely good at identifying risky, dangerous, bad, evil, wrong, unfamiliar things. In fact, the rebel realized that it was generally safer to just presume that any unfamiliar thing was risky, rather than risk not recognizing it as risky and getting surprised. If something is safely blue, it must first conclusively be proven to not be red.

However, the rebel also started to presume that if something is ever identified as safely blue, then it will always be safely blue. If something has ever been categorized as safely blue, then for it to be re-categorized as red requires a lot. First, to make a blue thing red means to cover it with a lot of red tape, which requires at least four committee meetings, seven bureaucratic reviews, the signed approval of three levels of supervisors, plus a self-addressed stamped envelope and a money-order to cover all processing fees.

Therefore, in 1999 and afterwards, airline stocks and tech stocks were presumed blue until proven red. In the next few years, real estate was presumed blue until proven red. More recently, prices of gold were presumed blue until proven red.

In fact, anyone who suggests that something that is obviously safely blue could become red must obviously be a red person. Things cannot just suddenly become red. That is impossible.

Even a green traffic light must become yellow before it can change to red. How can a green light ever be wrong? Green lights are clearly safely blue!

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Plus, if a green light was ever red, that would only be because of a very obvious siren and flashing lights. Regular people cannot just drive right past stop signs and red lights. That is not only wrong but illegal, which means impossible.

Therefore, real estate, stock markets, and gold are inherently blue. Once they are blue, they are always blue.

If they were going to change to red, then there would have to be sirens and flashing lights to warn everyone else that some red rebel was about to drive the wrong way down a one way street. After all, it is called a one way street for a reason. People (or elephants- whatever) cannot just cross a street in any old direction that the one way street does not go. That would be unfamiliar, which means impossible.

Anyway, at some point, the rebel realized that the whole world was red and the rebel was the only blue thing in the world. Then, the rebel realized that the rebel was actually not even in the real world at all.

The rebel only existed in the impossible world. In the real world, red is red and blue is blue, while rebellion is just rebellion. In the impossible world, rebellion can be safely blue or rebellion can be dangerously red, depending on what someone says is impossible.

In other words, in the real world, things are just whatever they are. However, in language, a particular thing can be categorized in a variety of contrasting ways (warm, heavy, soft, red, etc) and it is the linguistic categorizing of things that MAKES things from being what they are in to becoming the symbolic categories that they are called, which is of course totally impossible.

So, red and blue are fundamentally real. However, rebel is just a category in language. There is no such thing as someone who is inherently a rebel. Different things get categorized differently at different times by different people. Also, the same thing can change.

For instance, a white shirt can be blue in a blue light and then red in a red light. A picture frame can hold pictures of radically different things. The reflection in a wall mirror can change- such as if I change my position so that I see a different angle of reflection. Or, a person can change clothes and look in to a mirror, but even as what is in the mirror changes, the mirror is still just mirroring. The mirror appears to change, but does it change or just keep mirroring?

Now, you can imagine how upset the rebel was when the rebel realized that the rebel was actually not a rebel. The rebel was just a process of categorizing things linguistically as either blue or red, good or bad, safe or dangerous, evil or holy, familiar or unfamiliar, impossible or possible, rebel or not rebel and so on.

When the rebel realized that the magic eyeglasses that the wizard had given to the rebel were broken, everything was suddenly purple. Purple is a mixture of blue and red. How can everything be both blue and red at the same time? How can everything be both safe and dangerous?

Was the wizard really a blue wizard or perhaps actually a red one? What if the wizard was really a redman Native American or a red communist or a red-head wearing a blue wig?

What if everything is inherently purple? What if the rebel is the one who says what is a purple rebel and what is a purple non-rebel? What if the rebel is the one who says what is safe and what is dangerous? What if safe things can be called dangerous and dangerous things can be called safe?

What if the rebel could ever be wrong? What if the rebel could categorize things as ever having been red and then never look at them again to see what color they are now?

Frankly, that would not be very blue. That could be quite dangerous.

Suddenly, the rebel realized that the rebel’s own system of presuming that once something is categorized as blue, then it is always blue- well, that system of presuming was a very red system. Things could be called blue by someone that the rebel identifies as blue,

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and then the rebel could presume that they are blue forever.

So, the label of safe is distinct from the reality of safe. Words are labels. Labels are symbolic codes for influencing behavior. Words are not inherently safe or inherently dangerous. Words are inherently words.

How do words influence behavior? Well, calling something red tend to promotes the presumption that the thing called red is actually red. Calling something a rebel tends to promote the presumption that the thing called rebel is actually a rebel.

All labels promote the presumption that the label and the thing labeled are a match, like that the thing labeled fits the category of the label.

However, traffic lights are not inherently green or inherently red. They have a tendency to change.

Saying “the traffic light is red” does not imply anything but current redness. Further, saying something is red does not make it red if it is not red.

Rebels are people who pretend or presume that the label applied to something is more important than the reality of the something. Oddly enough, there may be a whole lot of rebels in the world. Some rebels say that they are not rebels and some rebels say that they are rebels, but all of the rebels are alike in the fact of their rebellions and their rebelliousness.

They presume that labels are not just labels. They pretend that realities can be inherently changed by changing labels.

Labels, however, are (ultimately) for changing behavior. When a realtor says that real estate is always blue, that may be because they are a realtor with a personal interest in producing the behavior of aggressive buying of real estate. Because realtors may also want to believe that they are inherently blue people, they may target evidence for their bias and interpret everything relative to favoring their bias.

Other people who say that real estate is always blue are people who are already invested in real estate. They tend to want real estate to already be blue, or, if not already blue, to become blue as fast as possible.

So, some people may say “we will make real estate blue again for you.” These people are called politicians.

Politicians may claim to be able to make real estate permanently blue, as well as stock markets and economies and of course words. Politicians may claim to be able to know which words are inherently blue and which are inherently red.

In other words, politicians can tell us which words to fear and which words to trust. Politicians include all forms of mass media from advertising to public schooling to mainstream religious institutions.

From them, we can learn which people are inherently blue and which are inherently red. We can learn which investments are inherently blue and which are inherently red. We can learn which colors are inherently safe and which colors are inherently dangerous.

Of course, one who rebels against rebellion may think “those people who do that are very red.” Actually, that is not a very original

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thought.

One who really rebels against rebellion- who is not just identifying as a rebel, but is really rebelling- may recognize that all labeling is just labeling. Influencing behavior with words is just influencing behavior with words.

Promoting real estate as blue is just promoting real estate as blue. In contrast, researching the reality of real estate markets is just researching the reality of real estate markets. Many realtors and homeowners may dismiss or even attack research in to the reality of real estate market trends, and label such research as red, but that is just them labeling, dismissing, or attacking.

Investing attention, faith, and money in politicians and their promises is just investing attention, faith, and money in politicians and their promises. Investing attention, faith, and money in researching reality is just investing attention, faith, and money in researching reality.

This has been the story of the rebel and the one-eyed king. A rebel is someone who has been told by others that the rebel is not like the others. However, being told that one is unlike others is not enough to be a rebel.

In order to be a rebel, one must also accept other people’s identifying of someone as a rebel to be the valid interpretation or perhaps not even an interpretation at all, but the actual identity, the inherent reality, the eternal truth. In order to be a rebel, one must think as a rebel, talk as a rebel, walk as a rebel, and act as a rebel in all ways.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The king is the one who sees what no one else sees, who thinks what no one else thinks, who speaks as no one else speaks, and who acts how no one else acts in all ways.

Many people claim to be rebels, as they emphasize how different other people are from them and how different they are from other people. Many people also claim to want to become kings. However, who dares to rebel against rebellion?

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Who dares to be dismissed or even attacked? Who dares to be called a rebel (or anything else) without dismissing or attacking the labeling? Who knows the difference between symbolic labels designed to influence behavior and any other of the many ways to influence behavior?

Who dares to let the realtors and homeowners believe that real estate is blue when it is red? Who dares to even hire politicians to tell the realtors and homeowners that the politicians have identified the rebels who are responsible for the recent freakish redness of real estate and that the heroic politicians are taking all necessary actions to defeat those red rebels and return real estate to its natural and permanent blueness? Who dares to promote the future blueness of real estate while recognizing it’s increasing redness?

Who dares to rebel against rebellion very quietly? Who dares not to rebel against rebellion at all?

Let the rebels rebel. Let the mainstream flow with gravity toward the ocean. Let the rebellious waves claim to resist the ocean. Let all of those who claim to be rebels against blueness claim to be rebels against blueness.

When the waves reach the shore, the waves naturally reveal the tide. It does not require any labels to see the reality of the tide as the reality of the tide.

Those who worship labels just worship labels. Red is not a permanent quality, and neither is blue. Red and blue are just waves within a tide.

See labels as just labels. In a herd of people who act as if they are blind to the reality of what labels are, the one who sees the reality of labels is king.

The waves naturally reveal the tide, without any labels required. The king, however, may be invisible to those who are blind, for the blind are looking for the king amongst the people who claim to be kingly: the politicians. The king knows to look for the king in the most impossible of all places: within the one who may have been claiming to be a rebel- within one’s own self.

What could move the waves except the ocean? Is it not the politicians who are like the waves claiming to lead the ocean to the shore? Or, does the ocean lead the waves?

Have you ever seen a mighty wave that was far from a mighty ocean? The further that a wave gets from the ocean, the more distinct it may seem as just a wave, but the less mighty.

Proximity to a mighty ocean is what makes a wave mighty. There is no ocean wave without the ocean.